The Crooked Forest – Poland (Nowe Czarnowo)

Just outside the village of Nowe Czarnowo near the town of Gryfino, in north-western Poland, stands a natural monument locals call the Crooked Forest. At first glance it’s an ordinary Scots-pine grove, but every trunk bends at a perfect 90-degree angle only 4–20 inches above the ground. Each tree forms an arc one to three meters long—like an upside-down question mark—then straightens and shoots skyward, topping out at roughly 35–50 feet. What makes the phenomenon truly eerie is its geometric precision: every single bend points due north. Hundreds of perfectly straight pines grow all around the grove, underscoring how local and specific the anomaly is.

For the people who live nearby, this surreal landscape is the heart of dark tales. The central legend speaks of an Old Witch who once practiced black magic in these woods. She struck a parasitic bargain with the peasants—fresh bread, eggs, meat, or she would blight their livestock and crops. One year the villagers forgot the tribute. Enraged, the witch cursed the land with sickness. When she died, they buried her beneath her hut, but the earth rejected the corpse of so much evil. From that metaphysical clash sprang the twisted pines. In Slavic folklore, a northward bow symbolizes the realm of darkness and the land of the dead.

Other stories circulate, too. One tells of a demonic storm that caught a group of farmers in the grove. They sheltered among the straight young pines, but when the storm passed, the people were gone and the trees had warped, frozen forever in a deep bow as if mourning the vanished. Another tale claims the pines are wardens, their contorted shapes the result of straining to hold some vast chthonic power—or a sealed portal—beneath the soil, the wood itself soaked with arcane radiation that keeps the evil locked away.

From 100 Cursed Places · Fern Flower Press